Whether the ‘healthy migrant effect’ exhibits different patterns in mortality and morbidity and how such patterns change during the life course have not been adequately understood in the literature. Using the datasets of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this study presents an in-depth investigation of the healthy migrant effect and its age variations in Australia. Specifically, this study estimates life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE) of the Australia-born and overseas-born populations, as well as eight Australian migrant groups, and decomposes the HLE differences into mortality and morbidity differences from three dimensions: age, gender and country of birth. The results reveal that compared with the Australia-born population, the overseas-born population enjoys a prominently longer LE; however, they suffer a similar or lower HLE after age 65 and a lower HLE/LE ratio throughout all ages. Young overseas-born adults manifest a more significant health advantage in both mortality and morbidity than early-life and older overseas-born individuals; however, the morbidity advantage of young migrants, particularly those who are female and originated from culturally different countries, declines dramatically with ageing. The results suggest that overall, migrants do not have the same advantage in morbidity as they do in mortality and that health advantages of migrants decreases with time in both dimensions of health and more rapidly for morbidity. The results suggest that pertinent policies are needed to reduce acculturation-related challenges and to mitigate the decline in migrants’ health in the post-migration environment to ensure better quality of life outcomes of migrants.

“健康移民效应”是否表现出不同的死亡率和发病率模式，以及这些模式在生命历程中如何变化，尚未在文献中得到充分理解。本研究利用澳大利亚统计局的数据，对澳大利亚的健康移民效应及其年龄变化进行了深入调查。具体来说，本研究估算了澳大利亚出生和海外出生人群以及八个澳大利亚移民群体的预期寿命（LE）和健康预期寿命（HLE），并从三个维度将HLE差异分解为死亡率和发病率差异：年龄、性别和出生国家。结果显示，与澳大利亚出生的人群相比，海外出生的人群的 LE 明显更长；然而，他们在 65 岁之后的 HLE 相似或较低，并且所有年龄段的 HLE/LE 比率都较低。海外出生的年轻成年人在死亡率和发病率方面比早年和老年海外出生的人表现出更显着的健康优势；然而，年轻移民，特别是来自文化不同国家的女性移民的发病优势，随着年龄的增长而急剧下降。结果表明，总体而言，移民在发病率方面并不具有与死亡率相同的优势，而且移民在健康和发病率方面的健康优势随着时间的推移而下降。研究结果表明，需要制定相关政策来减少与文化适应相关的挑战，并缓解移民后环境中移民健康状况的下降，以确保移民获得更好的生活质量。